


before they wilt crying

by malignantmuses



Category: Actor RPF, American (US) Actor RPF, Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018) Actor RPF, Papillon (2018) RPF
Genre: Dark, Drabble, Fame, Gen, Introspection, lapslock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-30 23:49:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19038049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malignantmuses/pseuds/malignantmuses
Summary: alone, at night, it haunts him.





	before they wilt crying

**Author's Note:**

> anyone coming from my other story: i'm sorry. would you believe me if i told you it was still in progress?
> 
> otherwise, i word-vomited up this mess after i delved too far into youtube comment sections on rami videos, which i should REALLY know better than to do. people can be so mean on there, you know? and weird. really weird. legit, i didn't make up any of the shit below abt the comments on rami's race and neuro-divergent behavior - that is ALL shit i saw in comments, including that bryan singer comment. fucked up, right?
> 
> anyways, mind some of the rough language below regarding race, mental illness and sexual violence. even though it's a downer, i hope some of you guys can enjoy it for what it is.
> 
> title from a poem penned by sam esmail in the fictional diary _red wheel barrow_.

it should go without saying, but the internet is a cruel place.

they say horrid things about him. some call his blood dirty, _like all arabs_ , between pointless debates over his ancestry or which exotic foreign country he hails from. others call him bug-eyed and coked out, a junkie for sure, jonasing for the next line and dead in ten years (but not before the public forgets him in five). he’ll be lucky if he makes it to rehab, if he’s not begging on the streets. that, or he’s psychotic, with all that twitching—is he anxious or just autistic? drugged out or downright dumb? they hurl diagnoses at their screens, unschooled doctors with unhealthy obsessions, sneering at his ticks, his lisps. his _everything_.

there are... stranger comments. people swearing he sold his soul to get this big, that he made a deal with the devil to make it in pagan hollywood, that he’s been tossed back and forth in the valley between producers like a cheap hooker. drugged out and sodomized since childhood. forget anxiety—maybe he just has ptsd from being repeatedly debauched by that bryan singer guy.

reading these ugly people’s ugly thoughts makes him sick. makes him wonder if that’s how everyone looks at him, if they see his shrunk pupils and hear his clenched jaw when he talks and think he’s _strange_ , disconcerting, dangerous. he tries so hard to be nice, friendly. bright. sure, he has his vices—sucks down more cigarettes than he’d like to admit, maybe, has kissed some people he wishes he hadn’t—but nothing like _this_. nothing like the villain roles he’s been pigeonholed into since he can remember. nothing like dirty blood and fucked up brains and forbidden sex, hidden trauma. 

but it plagues him. makes his stomach unsettled and his skin itchy. he tries to ignore it, to surround himself with family and good people, his _co-workers_ , people that get the same shit he does, but it still sits low in his stomach, below his navel. he’s good at ignoring it, mostly, riding the high of social stimulation and charming smiles, easy flirting with co-hosts and camera men and cashiers, but alone, at night, it haunts him. seeps into his skin and gives him bad dreams, false memories of needles in his arm and hands at his throat.

other actors will never really understand. they lack his brownness, his otherness. his thick upper lip and bruised eyes. his co-stars are all exceedingly _normal_ , classically beautiful. as much as he tries to accept himself for who he is—sometimes he wishes he was like them. simple. centric. but he’ll never be that, always cursed to live in the outer fringes instead. like every role he’s ever played—strange, unusual, and normally dead by the time the credits roll.

people are cruel. but now, he thinks, that’s just part of the role.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are lovely as always


End file.
